Triune God
We believe in one God, eternally existing in three equally divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who know, love and glorify one another. This one true and living God is infinitely perfect in both love and holiness. He is the creator of all things, visible and invisible, and is therefore worthy to receive all glory and worship. Immortal and eternal, He perfectly and exhaustively knows the end from the beginning, sovereignly sustains and governs over all things and, in His providence, brings about his eternal good purposes to redeem a people for Himself and restore His fallen creation, for the praise of His glorious grace.
Revelation
God graciously revealed His existence and power in the created order, and has supremely revealed Himself to fallen humans in the person of his Son, the incarnate Word. Moreover, this God is a speaking God, who by his Spirit has graciously revealed Himself in human words: we believe that God inspired the words preserved in Scripture, the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament, which document and are also the means of His saving work in the world. These writings alone constitute the verbally inspired Word of God, which in the original writings is supreme in authority and without error and is also complete in the revelation of His will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and final in its authority over every domain of knowledge it addresses. We confess that both our finiteness and our sinfulness preclude the possibility of exhaustively knowing God’s truth, but we affirm that, enlightened by the Spirit of God, we can truly know God’s revealed Truth. The Bible must be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s commands, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises. As God’s people hear, believe, and obey the Word, they are equipped as disciples of Christ and witnesses to the gospel.
Creation of Humanity
We believe that God created human beings, male and female, in His own image. Adam and Eve belonged to the created order that God Himself declared to be very good, serving as God’s agents in caring for, managing and governing creation, living in holy and devoted fellowship with their Creator. Men and women, equally created in God’s image, enjoy equal access to God through faith in Christ Jesus and are both called to move beyond passive self-indulgence to significant private and public engagement in family, church and civic life. Adam and Eve were made to complement each other in a one-flesh union that establishes the only normative pattern of sexual relations for men and women, so that marriage serves as a type of the union between Christ and His church. In God’s wise purposes, men and women are not simply interchangeable, but rather they complement each other in mutually enriching ways. God ordains that they assume distinctive roles which reflect the loving relationship between Christ and the church, the husband exercising headship in a way that displays Christ’s caring, sacrificial love, and the wife submitting to her husband in a way that models the church’s love for her Lord. In the ministry of the church, both men and women are encouraged to serve Christ and to develop their full potential in the manifold ministries of God’s people. The distinctive leadership role within the church given to qualified men is grounded in creation, fall, and redemption and should not be sidelined by appeals to cultural developments.
The Fall
We believe that Adam, made in God’s image, distorted that image and forfeited His original blessing—for himself and all his descendants—by falling into sin through Satan’s temptation. As a result, all human beings are alienated from God, corrupted in every aspect of their being (that is, physically, mentally, volitionally, emotionally, spiritually) and condemned, finally and irrevocably, to death—apart from God’s own gracious intervention. The supreme need of all human beings is to be reconciled to God under whose just and Holy Wrath we stand; the only hope of all human beings is in the undeserved love of this same God, who alone can rescue and restore us to Himself.
God’s Plan
We believe that from all eternity God determined, in grace, to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe, language, and nation, and to this end foreknew and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who by grace have faith in Jesus, and that He will one day glorify them—all to the praise of his glorious grace. In love, God commands and pleads with all people to repent and believe, having set his saving love on those He has chosen and having ordained Christ to be their Redeemer.
The Gospel
We believe the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ—God’s very wisdom. Complete foolishness to the world, yet the power of God for those being saved, those good news are Christological, centered on the cross and resurrection: the gospel is not proclaimed if Christ is not proclaimed, and the authentic Christ has not been proclaimed if his death and resurrection are not central (the message is: “Christ died for our sins… and raised”). Those good news are biblical (His death and resurrection are according to the Scriptures), theological and salvific (Christ died for our sins to reconcile us to God), historical (if the saving events had not happened, our faith would be in vain, we would still be in our sins, and would be, of all men, the most pittied), apostolic (the message was entrusted to and transmitted by the apostles who were witnesses of these saving events) and intensely personal (when it is received, believed and firmly held, individuals are saved).
Redemption in Christ
We believe that, moved by love and in obedience to the Father, the eternal Son became human: the Word became flesh, fully God and fully human, one Person in two natures. The man Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel, was conceived through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He perfectly obeyed His heavenly Father, lived a sinless life, performed signs and wonders, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, rose bodily from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven. As the mediating King, He is seated at God the Father’s right hand, exercising in heaven and earth all of God’s sovereignty, and is our High Priest and righteous Advocate. We believe that by His incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus Christ acted as our representative and substitute. He did this so that in him we might become the righteousness of God: on the cross He canceled sin, propitiated God, and, by bearing the full penalty for our sins, reconciled to God all who believe. By His resurrection, Christ Jesus was vindicated by His Father, broke the power of death and defeated Satan, who previously had power over it, and brought eternal life to all his people; by His ascension, He has been forever exalted as Lord and has prepared a place for us to be with Him. We believe that salvation is in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given by which we must be saved. Because God chose the lowly things of this world, the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, no human being can boast before Him—Christ Jesus has become for us the wisdom of God, that is, our righteousness, holiness, sanctification and redemption.
The Justification of Sinners
We believe that Christ, by His obedience and death, fully paid the debt of all those who are justified by him. By His sacrifice, He bore in our place the punishment due for our sins, properly, really, and fully satisfying God’s justice on our behalf. By His perfect obedience, He satisfied God’s righteous requirements for us, since by faith alone this perfect obedience is credited to all who trust in Christ alone for their acceptance before God. Since Christ was freely given on our behalf by the Father, not because of anything in us, and His obedience and punishment were accepted in place of our obedience and punishment, this justification is by free grace alone, so that both God’s exact justice and rich grace might be glorified in the justification of sinners. We believe that a zeal for personal and public obedience flows from this free justification.
The Power of the Holy Spirit
We believe that this salvation, attested in all Scripture and secured by Jesus Christ, is applied to His people by the Holy Spirit. Sent by the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ, and, as another paraclete, is present in and with those who believe. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and, by His powerful and mysterious work, regenerates spiritually dead sinners, awakening them to repentance and faith, and in Him they are baptized into union with the Lord Jesus, such that they are justified before God by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. By the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, and adopted into God’s family, participate in the divine nature, and receive His sovereignly distributed gifts. The Holy Spirit Himself is the pledge of the promised inheritance, and in this present age, He dwells in, directs, guides, instructs, equips, renews, and empowers believers to live and serve like Christ.
The Kingdom of God
We believe that those who have been saved by God’s grace through union with Christ by faith and through regeneration by the Holy Spirit enter the Kingdom of God and delight in the blessings of the new covenant: the forgiveness of sins, the inner transformation that awakens a desire to glorify, trust, and obey God, and the prospect of glory yet to be revealed. Good works constitute indispensable evidence of saving grace. Living as salt in a decaying world and light in a dark world, believers should neither withdraw into seclusion from the world nor become indistinguishable from it: rather, we must do good to the city, so the glory and honor of the nations can be offered to the Living God. Recognizing whose created order this is and because we are citizens of God’s Kingdom, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, doing good to all, especially to those who belong to the household of God. The Kingdom of God, already present but not fully realized, is the exercise of God’s sovereignty in the world toward the eventual redemption of all creation. The Kingdom of God is an invasive power that plunders Satan’s dark kingdom and regenerates and renovates through repentance and faith the lives of individuals rescued from that kingdom. Therefore, it inevitably establishes a new community of human life together under God.
God’s New People
We believe that God’s new covenant people have already come to the heavenly Jerusalem; they are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places. This universal church manifests itself in local churches of which Christ is the only head; thus each “local church” is, in fact, the church, the household of God, the assembly of the Living God, and the pillar and foundation of the truth. The church is Christ’s body, the apple of his eye, is engraved on his hands, and He has committed Himself to her forever. The church is distinguished by her gospel message, her sacred ordinances, her discipline, her great mission, and, above all, by her love for God, and by the love of her members for one another and for the world. Crucially, this gospel we cherish has both personal and corporate dimensions, neither of which may be ignored. Christ Jesus is our peace: He not only brought about peace with God, but also peace between alienated peoples. His purpose was to create in Himself one new humanity, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both to God through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility. The church serves as a sign of God’s future new world when its members live for the service of one another and their neighbor, rather than for self-focus. The church is the corporate dwelling place of God’s Spirit and God’s ongoing witness in the world.
Baptism and the Supper of the Lord
We believe that baptism and the Lord’s Supper are ordained by the Lord Jesus Himself. The first is connected to entry into the new covenant community and the second to the continuous renewal of the covenant. Together they are simultaneously God’s pledge to us, divinely ordained means of grace, our public vow of submission to the once crucified and now risen Christ, and the anticipation of His return and the consummation of all things.
The Restauration of All Things
We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with His holy angels, when He will exercise His final role as Judge and His Kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the righteous and unrighteous—the unrighteous to judgment and conscious eternal punishment in hell, as the Lord himself taught, and the righteous to eternal blessing in the presence of Him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in a new heaven and new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day, the church will be presented spotless before God through the obedience, suffering, and triumph of Christ, all sin will be purged and its harmful effects banished forever. God will be all in all and His people will be enveloped by His immediate and ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of His glorious grace.
This statement of faith took the confession of statement from TGC as reference . If you with to understand better any of the mentioned points, check the book The Gospel as Center.
We affirm that the only authority for the church is the Bible, which is verbally inspired, inerrant, infallible, and fully sufficient and trustworthy.
We deny that the Bible is merely a testimony of divine revelation, or that any portion of Scripture is marked by error or by the effects of human sinfulness. We also deny that anyone can bring any new doctrinal revelation to God’s people.
We affirm that the authority and sufficiency of Scripture extends to the entire Bible, and therefore, the Bible is our final authority for all doctrine and practice.
We deny that any part of the Bible should be used to deny the truthfulness and reliability of any other part. We also deny any effort to identify a canon within the canon or, for example, to place Jesus’ words in opposition to Paul’s writings.
We affirm that truth is always a central theme for the church, and that it must resist the seduction of pragmatism and postmodern conceptions of truth as substitutes for obedience to Scripture’s comprehensive claims.
We deny that truth is merely a product of social construction, or that gospel truth can be expressed or grounded in anything other than full trust in the Bible’s veracity, the historicity of biblical events, and its language’s ability to convey understandable truth in propositional form. We also deny that the church can establish its ministry through pragmatism, current marketing techniques, or contemporary cultural trends.
We affirm the centrality of expository preaching in the church and the urgent need for a restoration of biblical exposition and public reading of Scripture in worship.
We deny that worship that honors God should marginalize or neglect the ministry of the Word when manifested through exposition and public reading. Furthermore, we deny that a church devoid of true biblical preaching can survive as an evangelical church.
We affirm that the Bible reveals God as a being infinite in all His perfections and, consequently, truly omniscient, omnipotent, timeless and self-existent. We also affirm that God possesses perfect knowledge of all things past, present and future, including human thoughts, actions and decisions.
We deny that the God of the Bible is limited in any way in terms of knowledge and power or any other perfection or attribute; or that He has, in any way, limited His own perfections.
We affirm that the doctrine of the Trinity is an essential Christian doctrine, which bears witness to the ontological reality of the one true God in three divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each possessing the same substance and perfections.
We deny the claim that the Trinity is not an essential doctrine, or that the Trinity can be understood in merely functional and administrative categories.
We affirm that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in perfect, pure and unmistakable union throughout His incarnation and now for all eternity. We also affirm that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners, a sacrifice for sin, and a propitiation of God’s wrath toward sinners. We affirm the death, burial and bodily resurrection of Christ as essential to the gospel. We also affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord over his church and that he will reign over the entire cosmos in fulfillment of the Father’s gracious purpose.
We deny that the vicarious nature of Christ’s atonement for sin can be compromised without serious damage to the gospel or denied without rejecting the gospel. Furthermore, we deny that Jesus Christ is visible only in weakness and not in power, lordship or real Kingdom, or conversely, that Christ is visible only in power and never in weakness.
We affirm that salvation is entirely by grace, and that the gospel is revealed to us in doctrines that faithfully exalt God’s sovereign purpose to save sinners, and in His determination to save His redeemed people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for His glory alone.
We deny that any teaching, theological system, or way of presenting the gospel that denies the centrality of God’s grace in Christ as his unmerited gift to sinners can be considered true doctrine.
We affirm that, from all eternity, God determined, in His grace, to save a great multitude of guilty sinners from every tribe and tongue, nations and peoples, and to this end He knew and chose them. We believe that God justifies and sanctifies those who, by His grace, have faith in Jesus, and that one day He will glorify them — all for the praise of His glorious grace.
We deny that divine election is based merely on the foreknowledge of a positive human response to the gospel. We also deny that man can, without the regeneration of the Spirit, believe in Christ and repent of his sins by himself.
We affirm that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the means God uses to bring salvation to His people; that He commands sinners to believe in the gospel; and that the church is commissioned to preach and teach the gospel to all nations.
We deny that evangelism can be reduced to any program, technique, or marketing approach. We also deny that salvation can be separated from repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
We affirm that salvation is given to those who truly believe in Jesus Christ and confess that He is Lord.
We deny that there is salvation in any other name, or that saving faith can take any other form, except that of conscious belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and His saving acts.
We affirm the continuity of God’s saving purpose and the Christological unity of the covenants. We also affirm a basic distinction between law and grace, and that the true gospel exalts Christ’s atoning work as the perfect and complete fulfillment of the law.
We deny that the Bible presents any other means of salvation except God’s gracious acceptance of sinners in Christ.
We affirm that sinners are justified by faith in Christ alone, and that justification by faith alone is both essential and central to the gospel.
We deny that any teaching that minimizes, confuses, or rejects justification by faith alone can be considered faithful to the gospel. Furthermore, we deny that any teaching that separates regeneration and faith is a true interpretation of the gospel.
We affirm that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to believers by God’s decree alone, and that this righteousness, imputed to the believer by faith alone, is the only righteousness that justifies.
We deny that this righteousness is obtained by effort or merited in any way, is infused into the believer to any degree, or is realized in the believer through anything except faith.
We affirm that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, and that through His powerful and mysterious work, He regenerates sinners who were spiritually dead, awakening them to repentance and faith. We affirm that through the Spirit’s agency, believers are renewed, sanctified, adopted into God’s family, and receive His gifts which are sovereignly distributed.
We deny that the Holy Spirit is merely a force or that He is subject to human imperatives. We deny that He raises up apostles today like the twelve and Paul, and that the extraordinary gifts of revelation given at Pentecost can be automatically claimed or demanded as decisive proof of God’s power operating today. We deny that the true work of the Spirit occurs without pointing to and exalting Christ. Furthermore, we deny that there is any true Christian who does not possess the Holy Spirit.
We affirm that suffering is a common experience for all people after the Fall, including Christians. However, we affirm that God sovereignly governs all things and causes all things to work together for the good of His children, so that they may grow in conformity to Christ’s image.
We deny that God has promised all His children a life of complete health and wealth on this earth, or that we can compel Him to bless us through acts of faith or financial contributions. We deny that every Christian who suffers is necessarily in sin or lacks faith, and we deny that being more than conquerors implies not going through trials. Furthermore, we deny that exercising faith means decreeing our victory or calling our blessing into existence.
We affirm that the form of Christian discipleship is congregational, and that God’s purpose is evident in faithful evangelical congregations, each demonstrating God’s glory through authentic ecclesiological marks. Moreover, we deny that the Lord’s Supper can be responsibly administered without the proper practice of church discipline.
We deny that any Christian can be truly a faithful disciple without the teaching, discipline, fellowship, and accountability of a congregation of disciples, organized as an evangelical church.
We affirm that evangelical churches should work together in humble and voluntary cooperation. We also affirm that the spiritual fellowship of evangelical congregations offers witness to the unity of the church and God’s glory.
We deny that loyalty to any denomination or ecclesiastical communion can precede the claims of truth and faithfulness to the gospel.
We affirm that evangelical churches should work together in humble and voluntary cooperation. We also affirm that the spiritual fellowship of evangelical congregations offers witness to the unity of the church and God’s glory.
We deny that loyalty to any denomination or ecclesiastical communion can precede the claims of truth and faithfulness to the gospel.
We affirm that evangelical churches should work together in humble and voluntary cooperation. We also affirm that the spiritual fellowship of evangelical congregations offers witness to the unity of the church and God’s glory.
We deny that loyalty to any denomination or ecclesiastical communion can precede the claims of truth and faithfulness to the gospel.
We affirm that Scripture reveals a pattern of complementary order between men and women, and that this order is, in itself, a witness to the gospel, as it is a gift from our Creator and Redeemer. We also affirm that all Christians are called to serve in the body of Christ, and that God has given both men and women important and strategic roles in the home, church, and society. Furthermore, we affirm that the teaching office in the church is assigned only to those men who are called by God in fulfillment of biblical teachings. We equally affirm that men should lead their homes as husbands and fathers who fear and love God.
We deny that the distinction of roles between men and women revealed in the Bible is evidence of mere cultural conditioning, or a manifestation of male oppression, or prejudice against women. We also deny that this biblical distinction of roles excludes women from ministering significantly in Christ’s kingdom. Furthermore, we deny that any church can confuse these matters without damaging its witness to the gospel.
We affirm that God calls His people to reveal His glory in the reconciliation of nations in the church, and that God’s pleasure in this reconciliation is evident in the gathering of believers from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation.
We deny that any church can accept prejudice, discrimination, or racial division, as this would betray the gospel.
We affirm that our only sure and unshakeable hope lies in God’s certain and firm promises. Therefore, our hope is an eschatological hope, grounded in our confidence that God will bring all things to consummation in a way that will result in greater glory to His own name, greater prominence to His Son, and greater rejoicing for His redeemed people.
We deny that we should find our fulfillment and happiness in this world, or that God’s crucial purpose for us is merely to find a more meaningful and satisfying life in this fallen world. Furthermore, we deny that any teaching that offers health and wealth in this life, as guarantees promised by God, can be considered a true gospel.
We have adapted this text from Together For The Gospel‘s Affirmations and Denials to fit our Brazilian context.